Gaza's Deir al-Balah tent massacre survivors recount horror of Israeli airstrikes

Survivors of the Israeli military’s airstrikes on a cluster of tents located within the premises of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, are recounting the horrors of the deadly massacre which caused a number of tents to catch a fire.

In the early hours on Sunday, the Israeli regime carried out airstrikes over the refuge shelters which resulted in the fatalities of at least 5 displaced Palestinians, while leaving behind several others injured.

The 36-year-old Palestinian woman, Nahed Saleh, who has been displaced from Beit Hanoun, located in the northern Gaza Strip, was asleep when an explosion occurred just a few meters from her tent within the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Upon exiting her tent, she encountered a chaotic scene with individuals fleeing in all directions, accompanied by screams and cries. In a harrowing sight, she witnessed several nearby tents engulfed in flames due to the bombings.

“We didn’t know where to go or how to move. The intensity of the explosion made us leave the tents without putting on our clothes. We were wearing our nightclothes. We thought the bombing was targeting the entire hospital. We went out to find the fire burning the tents next to ours,” Saleh said.

Sunday’s airstrikes marked yet another instance of the Israeli military targeting the shelters of displaced individuals in Gaza.

A month prior, an Israeli airstrike struck tents accommodating displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi region near Khan Younis in southern Gaza, resulting in the deaths of 90 individuals.

Additionally, two weeks ago, an Israeli strike hit a tent that was sheltering journalists within the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, leading to one fatality.

“We realized that a drone targeted some tents, and the surrounding tents caught fire. We arrived at the place immediately and began documenting a heinous crime against civilians sleeping in their tents inside the hospital, which is a place that is supposed to be safe and internationally protected,” said Fadi Thabet a journalist and photographer who was near the place that was targeted when the bomb was dropped.

“Civilians started rushing to the place to put out the fires, but the fire continued to burn for about 20 minutes in the tents. Once the fire was put out, the paramedics started pulling out martyrs and the injured from the place. The scenes were difficult and harsh,” he added.

Samah Al-Nazli, was situated less than 10 meters from the tent that was bombed and finds it nearly impossible to recount her experience even three days after the incident.

She expresses, with considerable difficulty, that she did not hear the bombing itself but sensed the heat followed by the explosion, describing those moments as the most harrowing of her life.

“The fire torched more than seven tents, and my friend was martyred, leaving two innocent children behind,” she said.

“All I saw was destruction and fire. I saw three young men and a girl completely burned, and my relatives in the neighboring tent suffered minor burns. The shrapnel reached them. We left everything behind us and ran to escape,” she recounted.

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